Federal marshals went to great lengths to ensure the arrests of Ed and Elaine Brown would not require the use of violence, prosecutors said yesterday during the first day of the couple's trial for obstruction of justice, conspiracy and possession of explosives.

Lawyers for the couple countered that the Browns' ideology and prior experiences convinced them that federal agents were trying to kill them. Their resulting actions, including the acquisition of weapons and repeated threats against law enforcement agents during a nearly nine-month standoff, were expressions of that fear, not aggression, they said.

The Browns are being tried for their conduct during the standoff, which began when they abandoned their January 2007 trial for tax-related felonies. They evaded arrest on bench warrants by holing up in their self-sufficient home in Plainfield, entertaining sympathetic armed guests and threatening violence if law enforcement agents tried to capture them.

Yesterday was the first day of testimony in the trial, which could result in virtual life sentences for both Browns if they are found guilty. In an opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Arnold Huftalen focused on two themes - the actions U.S. marshals took to avoid harm to the Browns and the extensive arsenal that he said investigators found at the couple's home after their arrests in October 2007.

"They wanted to, safely, without injury or violence, arrest the Browns and bring them out," Huftalen said, describing the marshals' motives throughout the standoff.

That strategy, Huftalen said, explained the marshals' patience and their willingness to forgo easy opportunities for capturing the Browns. During his statement, he described how one government sniper on the Browns' property was so close to Ed Brown that he was hit by stones kicked up by Brown's lawnmower. That agent didn't try to apprehend Brown then, Huftalen said.

He described an elaborately planned arrest attempt in June 2007 that was foiled twice by Brown supporters. Dozens of specially trained marshals had hidden themselves in and around the Brown property and hoped to arrest Ed Brown using "less than lethal" force as he visited his mailbox on his ATV.

The plan was undermined on one occasion when a supporter picked up the mail instead of Brown and on a second when a Brown supporter stumbled on one of the hidden teams while walking the couple's dog. Marshals subdued and detained that supporter, Daniel Riley, and aborted their attempt to catch Ed Brown that day.

Defense lawyers focused on that June 2007 day as a critical turning point in the Browns' perspective on their situation. According to the lawyers, the Browns had intended a peaceful protest against what they saw as an unfair judicial system and had felt safe at their self-sufficient home.

After the arrest of their friend, who told them camouflaged agents had shot rounds at him as he fled, their distrust escalated. The couple, long active in anti-government causes, were well-versed in the deadly confrontations between federal officers and extremists at Ruby Ridge, in Idaho, and Waco, Texas, and had those examples in mind, the couple's lawyers said.

"Ed and Elaine Brown had a reasonable basis to believe the government was trying to kill them," said Michael Iacopino, Ed Brown's lawyer.

In a recent court filing, the Browns said Riley's story had left them "extremely frightened" and said they only began accepting weapons offered by supporters after the incident.

But in Huftalen's opening statement, the prosecutor noted that supporters living with the couple had ordered .50-caliber rifles and bomb-making materials in the weeks before the arrest attempt.

"What had started as a peaceful tax protest was turning into something else entirely," Huftalen said.

The Browns were arrested by an undercover team of U.S. marshals in October 2007. The arrest team posed as supporters and shared pizza and beer with the couple before taking them into custody.

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